It's hard to impress people when they already know what you're going to say. So when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stood before a packed audience at Pace University today to announce the new Amazon Kindle DX, the response was a collected, "Yup, that's pretty much what we expected." This was in stark contrast to the press conference just three months ago when we knew the new Kindle was coming but not much else. Oh, and there was no Stephen King or any other celebrity reading Kindle prose to a throng of admiring book author wannabes.

Perhaps this is why I left the Kindle DX event feeling a bit underwhelmed and wondering why Amazon hadn't broken any new ground. It took a few hours for me to realize that all Amazon did was announce a bunch of good and important upgrades for the Kindle. There are holesbig onesto be sure the DX ultimately cements Amazon's position in the digital e-book reader business. And I am convinced that there's no turning back.

Here's what's important and what's curious about the Kindle DX.

Details Please
Bezos introduced some key partnerships during his relatively brisk presentation. Amazon locked in key newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. Yes, the Boston Globe is in there, too, having just averted closure. Amazon also signed up three major textbook publishers: Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage. Bezos explained that the publishers account for 60 percent of the textbook market, though it was unclear how many tomes they will make available, and in what time frame. Finally, Bezos and a Case Western Reserve University rep briefly discussed a pilot program that would occur with some schoolsthough there were few details.

There was even less information on the newspaper front. Bezos mentioned some sort of subsidized program where newspapers would offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price as long as customers locked in for an extended subscription. Sounds great, but the DX costs nearly $500, and an extended $10-a-month subscription could be $240 for two years. Will the New York Times Kindle DX sell for $250? That seems to be the only way to make the subsidy attractive enough to work.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Co., appeared on stage to laud the agreement, but he offered scant details besides some confusing information about possible limits to the regions in which Kindle DX edition subscriptions would be available versus those for the print edition. After the press conference, I couldn't find any newspaper representatives to talk to: Sulzberger and Bezos were nowhere to be found. Amazon reps could offer zero additional details about the newspaper offering.

Saving Newspapers
Amazon's decision to work directly with newspaper publishers to help them get subscription-based content onto the large Kindle was expected and is exciting, but it's not something that's going to save the industry. Onstage, Sulzberger thanked Bezos for working with him and made a cryptic comment about books salesmaybe an inside joke that nobody got. As I told more than one person, I don't think Amazon really cares about saving print. The company does great business on print books, but it doesn't sell newspapers. It sells content and is keenly interested in offering all the content it keeps in inventory in a digital format. (It is more affordable to store and ship that way for one thing.) Putting newspapers on the Kindle DX is just noise. The real interest for Amazon is in textbooks, which promises to be a huge market for the company.

Textbook Revolution
While Bezos glossed over the details of the Kindle DX and its university pilot programs with Arizona State University, University of Virginia, Reed College, and Case Western Reserve University, I was able to find someone from ASU who knew a bit more about what college students would encounter this fall. Adrian Sannier, ASU University Technology Officer, explained that the test run would be confined to ASU's honors college, which has about 1,000 students. ASU and Amazon will deliver Kindle DXs to these students, preloaded with all the necessary textbooks, in time for the start of the fall semester.

Cool, but this means the students won't get the full experience of setting up, perusing the bookstore, and downloading books. It does, however, put the pilot program on the fast track for feedback. Sannier was pretty excited about the whole program and shared another detail that Bezos left out: Digital textbooks would cost roughly 50 percent of what their physical counterparts cost. He also said he sees a huge benefit of having digital textbooks, "We're getting much richer text into the hands of studentsit's searchable, linkable the ability to have material at their fingertips all the time is a major step forward."

I still wonder if universities are worried about losing whatever cut they may get through bookstore sales. Will Amazon give them a percentage of digital textbook sales if there is a Kindle DX partnership in place? I'd hazard that textbook publishers are hoping the new Kindle DX will help increase new book sales. Perhaps it will attract cash-strapped students who typically buy used books from friends or at the bookstore.

A lot of people have asked me if I spent time with the new DX. I did, but not too much. There just isn't that much that's new. There's the huge screen (2.5 times the size of the current Kindle 2), an accelerometer that lets the Kindle DX automatically reorient the page when you turn it to the side, a slightly redesigned keyboard, a PDF reader, and the ability to set line length. I did press one Amazon rep on whether or not anything had been left out of the presentation, but he assured me that I had all of the information.

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About the Author

A 25-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance Ulanoff is the former Editor in Chief of PCMag.com.
Lance Ulanoff has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases, "on line" meant "waiting" and CPU speeds were measured in single-digit megahertz. He's traveled the globe to report on a vast array of consumer and business... See Full Bio

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